The first edition of DWN have focus on Erinn Clark as well as Debian and the one Laptop per Child Project and much more.
—————————————————————————Debian Weekly Newshttp://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2007/01/Debian Weekly News – January 23rd, 2007—————————————————————————

Welcome to this year's 1st issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for theDebian community. [1]Erinn Clark, co-founder and leader of [2]DebianWomen is [3]selected one of the top 10 girl geeks who are influentialin Open Source. Linux-Watch posted Chris Fearnley's [4]rebuttal toSteven J. Vaughan-Nichols argument that Debian is in trouble.

Debian and the one Laptop per Child Project. Michael Voigt[5]wondered if Debian is supporting the [6]One Laptop per Childproject. It has been founded by the [7]MIT Media Laboratory and isabout creating an cheap and affordable laptop for children in thethird world and developing countries. Petter Reinholdtsen[8]explained that Debian is [9]participating with its [10]DebianEdusub-project.

French DebianEdu Developers Meeting. Mathieu Duploy [11]announced the[12]developers meeting especially for French the Debian-Edu developerssponsored by [13]Centre Européen de Transfert et de Recherche enInformatique Libre. It will take place on February 17th to 24th inSoissons (France). Transportation from Soissons to [14]FOSDEM inBrussels is included.

Debian's History 2006. Martin Zobel-Helas [15]reported that he and AnaGuerrero are creating an [16]review of all major Debian events in2006. They are using different news channels like [17]Debian WeeklyNews, [18]Planet Debian and several [19]mailing lists as source forthe review. Readers who find unmentioned events and thus want tocontribute should write an email to the [20]debian-publicity mailinglist. The review is planned to be published on several websites like[21]Linux Weekly News and [22]Linux.com.

Debian-Installer for Sony PS3. Kenshi Muto [23]announced that hisfriend, Takeshi Yaegashi succeeded to install Debian on a SonyPlayStation 3 (PS3), which is a 64-bit PowerPC architecture that someGNU/Linux distributions and NetBSD already have a port for. Yaegashiset up a Wiki [24]page that describes the installation using acustomised version of the [25]debian-installer.

Adding Style Checks to lintian. Mikhail Gusarov [26]wondered ifremoving empty lines from the end of debian/copyright anddebian/changelog together with the use of two spaces before Homepage:in the description would warrant a [27]lintian check. Nico Golde[28]pointed out that these are not backed up by [29]policy manual andhence shouldn't be included. Russ Allbery [30]reported that he intendsto add a set of style checks to lintian that would be optional andwould have to be explicitly requested.

Woody Distribution archived. Florian Lohoff [31]noticed that the oldstable release [32]woody has been removed from [33]mirror serversrecently. Kevin Mark [34]explained that this happened because Debianonly supports old distributions for a defined period of time byproviding packages and security support. After this the olddistribution won't be maintained anymore but kept on[35]archive.debian.org for historical reasons.

Kernel Handbook updated. Jurij Smakov [36]announced that the[37]Debian Kernel Handbook has been updated to reflect changes to thekernel build process and architecture which were made for the upcomingrelease of [38]etch. The handbook covers several kernel-related topicsand tasks like building kernel packages, module packages or theinitial ram-disk system used in Debian. Any feedback, comments, orcontent proposals are welcome.

Anticipating the Release Date. [39]Debian Administration is conductinga [40]poll that allows readers to estimate the release date of[41]etch. 45 % of its readers assume that etch will be releasedwhenever it is ready. [42]debianex stated that Debian is the moststable distribution and because of its stability, apt-get and a veryhelpful large community he is using the system and expects it to stayat No 1.

Abandon stable Releases? Joseph Smidt [43]suggested to only supportunstable and testing so that maintaining is less stress and thetesting distribution becomes even better. Several developers[44]disagreed on the [45]numbers backing up the assumption that 76 %of the users already run [46]testing. Wouter Verhelst [47]added thatin a corporate world [48]stable is the prevailing Debian distribution.

Compatibility between Creative Commons 2.5 and Debian. Luis Matos[49]asked for feedback about the compatibility between [50]CreativeCommons 2.5 licenses and Debian. Andrew Donnellan [51]pointed out thatat this moment none of the Creative Common licenses are compatiblewith the [52]Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG). However, some ofthe licenses of version 3.0 will most likely be compatible with theDFSG thanks to the effort of Debian people. Francesco Poli [53]addedthat the current drafts are not DFSG-free, though.

Mailman Upgrade Path from Etch to Lenny. Lionel Elie Mamane[54]reported that the current version 2.1.9 of [55]mailman in [56]etchwill not have an upgrade path to version 2.2.x anticipated for lenny.This is because of a change in the file format. Mailman 2.1.10 will beable to export data into a neutral XML format which later versions areable to import. Lionel wondered if he was allowed to upload a newerversion or include the export facility in the package for etch.

Measuring Development Progress. Lars Wirzenius [57]proposed a set ofcarefully selected statistics to measure progress of development inDebian. He suggested weekly reports on total numbers, median andmaximum for all open bug reports, reports grouped by severity,response time, lifetime of bugs, and more, and would like to comparethese with numbers from the week before.

Status of the M68k Port. Ingo Jürgensmann [58]reported that the[59]m68k port is performing quite well after the GCC issues werefinally solved by Roman Zippel. This port is currently in a bettershape than [60]alpha and [61]arm. He wondered if m68k could be arelease architecture now, given that [62]etch hasn't been released inDecember.

Installing Debian over PPPoE Connections. Eddy Petrisor [63]reportedthat he has successfully installed Debian over a PPPoE (DSL)connection which was established by the [64]debian-installer. Thisdemonstrates the comeback of native DSL installations directly from a[65]mirror server by using the boot argument install modules=ppp-udeb.

Orphaned Packages. 47 packages were orphaned since the last issue andrequire a new maintainer. This makes a total of 377 orphaned packages.Many thanks to the previous maintainers who contributed to the FreeSoftware community. Please see the [104]WNPP pages for the full list,and please add a note to the bug report and retitle it to ITA: if youplan to take over a package. To find out which orphaned packages areinstalled on your system the wnpp-alert program from devscripts may behelpful.

Want to continue reading DWN? Please help us create this newsletter.We still need more volunteer writers who watch the Debian communityand report about what is going on. Please see the [330]contributingpage to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving yourmail at [331]dwn@debian.org.